Disturbances of humour in postpartum: our experience

The study was conducted on 64 women who were to give birth. The average age ranged from 31-44 years and the instruments for evaluation consisted of: 1) Individual and psychological questionnaires; 2) Italian version of the Short Form Health Survey Questionnaire (SF-36); 3) Sheehan Disability Scale; 4) Zung self-rating depression scale. Of the women included in the study 27.7% found their humour worsened during their last pregnancy, while 19.15% said that their humour worsened after the birth. In these patients we frequently found obstetric and/or puerperal pathologies. There was also a strong correlation with the premenstrual syndrome and with hyperemesis in the first trimester. On the contrary, there was no correlation with familiarity and socio-demographic characteristics. The data allow us to conclude that any pregnant woman can develop medium or strong symptoms of depression thus calling for great attention to be paid to the psychological dynamics of birth.